1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate to the assessment of discount potential, and more particularly, to the assessment of discount potential from suppliers, to allow buyers to capitalize on the discount potential of vendor payment terms.
2. Description of the Related Art
In industry today, companies tend to use a large number of suppliers to provide goods and services that, in turn, allow the companies to provide the goods and/or services that they provide to their customers.
In the financial transactions between companies (buyers) and suppliers, special payment terms are often negotiated. These payment terms often include special pricing discounts, and/or discounts for early payment.
Companies have found that great economic gains can be obtained by negotiating beneficial payment terms with suppliers. Due to the different circumstances of different suppliers, however, greater negotiating potential may exist with certain suppliers over other suppliers. In addition, because a large company may deal with hundreds or thousands of suppliers, most companies only have time and resources to pursue negotiations with a small subset of their entire base of suppliers.
For these reasons, there is a need for an automated, quick and efficient manner of determining with which suppliers to pursue discount negotiations, and how aggressively to pursue those negotiations.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for improved systems and methods for assessing discount potential of suppliers.